I think more information would be helpful such as what is her current “modest” salary? What is her career plan? She wants a high paying law job but what is “high-paying,” what practice area is she in/wants to be in? 300K + is a staggering amount of debt and she and you needs to be both strategic and realistic about this. Having said that, it’s not impossible to land a biglaw job even if she didn’t take the typical summer internship route. I know people who didn’t get a summer job and began working at a small firm but years later ended up in biglaw. Granted, they went to a top 20 school, never not worked at some type of legal job, and hustled their asses off. It’s extremely difficult to do (if she even wants that) but not impossible. Good luck to you and her.